Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s most celebrated living artists. Her polka-dotted pumpkin and flower sculptures are recognised globally, and her infinity mirror rooms are pivotal to the twenty-first century’s turn towards art as an immersive experience.
Yayoi Kusama explores Kusama’s unique worldview, starting with artwork created during her childhood and culminating with works made this year. In between, Kusama’s extraordinary career is surveyed, from her experimental years in postwar Japan to her contributions to New York’s avant-garde scene in the 1960s, through to her return to Japan in 1973 and subsequent re-emergence as an artist of international renown.
Comprising close to 200 works, this is the largest exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Australia and one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of the artist ever presented globally. Featuring painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, film and installation, the exhibition reveals the astonishing breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice.
Yayoi Kusama will be displayed across the entire ground floor of NGV International and extend into NGV’s public spaces and the surrounding Melbourne Arts Precinct including NGV’s iconic Waterwall, Great Hall, and Federation Court.
A major highlight of the exhibition will be an impressive assembly of Kusama’s iconic immersive installations, including her infinity mirror rooms that ingeniously use mirrors to create the visual illusion of infinite space. One of these, titled Infinity Mirrored Room–My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, 2024, makes its global premiere in Melbourne.
Although Kusama has experimented with many media and forms of expression, her underlying motivation for making art has remained the same. She seeks to convey the complex beauty of the natural world, and to explore her (and by extension, our) place within an infinitely expanding universe.
On the cover: Yayoi Kusama
Dots Obsession 1996/2024
stickers, vinyl balloons, mirror
dimensions variable
Collection of the artist
© YAYOI KUSAMA
Source: National Gallery of Victoria
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